If Indiana's Republican lawmakers factored in politics when deciding whether to support a federal budget deal Wednesday, they may have been looking back at 2012 as much as forward to the 2014 elections.

Last year, tea party and other conservative activists showed their influence by knocking off GOP Sen. Richard Lugar in the primary for not sufficiently toeing the conservative line.

And those same groups threatened to make 2014 difficult for anyone who supported the deal that ended the partial federal shutdown and restored the government's borrowing authority for a few months.

"It's time for a hostile takeover of the GOP," Greg Fettig, a tea party leader in Indiana who is the Midwest regional coordinator for FreedomWorks, said Thursday. "We're going to go after everybody at every level, primarying every chance we get, from the dog catcher in the local town all the way up to (House Speaker) John Boehner and (Senate Minority Leader) Mitch McConnell."

That includes, he said, the three Indiana Republicans who voted for the deal: Sen. Dan Coats — who doesn't face the voters until 2016 — along with Reps. Susan Brooks of Carmel and Todd Young of Bloomington. (The lawmakers said it was important to reopen government and avoid default even though they failed in their efforts to undermine the Affordable Care Act or reduce the deficit as part of the budget deal.)

But the tea party's popularity nationally is the lowest it's been since emerging as a conservative protest movement against Barack Obama's policies on health care and the economy, according to the latest polls from the Pew Research Center. And there's a battle within the GOP for control of the party.

"I presume that the hard-core right — really the inexperienced, louder part — has peaked," said former Indiana GOP Rep. Mark Souder.

The strategy to shut down the government over the health care law, he said, overwhelmed the better GOP narrative of the problems with Obamacare. While the tea party is still vocal, Souder predicted that the Republicans upset with the "my way or the highway" approach are emerging as the stronger faction.

If it's unclear whether Hoosier Republicans who supported the deal will pay a political price within their own party, it's also uncertain whether Democrats can successfully go after GOP Reps. Jackie Walorski of Jimtown and Larry Bucshon of Newburgh for opposing the deal. Of the state's seven GOP House members, Walorski and Bucshon represent the districts with the smallest GOP margin, although President Barack Obama still didn't come close to carrying either last year.

Nevertheless, after the vote, the political arm of House Democrats sent out identical releases criticizing Walorski and Bucshon.

"Even as others broke ranks and chose the middle ground, Congresswoman Walorski clung to bitter, reckless partisanship until the very end — and voted to continue the shutdown and default on our debt," said Emily Bittner of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Nathan L. Gonzales, who tracks elections for the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report, said Democrats will use the vote to try to recruit a strong challenger to Walorski, who had the closest race in the delegation last year. But even if Democrats find an opponent, there's still a lot of time for dynamics to change before the 2014 election.

"This is the biggest political story right now, but it's too early to understand what the complete political fallout is going to be because it just happened," Gonzales said. "It's also complicated because it looks like we're going to face another fight at the beginning of the year. So we'll have to see what the fallout is from that. And we still have a year for other news events to happen and take control of the conversation."

A factor that led to the political polarization in Congress and contributed to the recent budget impasse is that fact that fewer lawmakers represent swing districts, ones where neither party dominates. That gives them less incentive to move to the middle, where compromise is usually forged.

The number of districts where neither party has a significant advantage has plunged from 164 (out of 435) in 1998 to 90 last year, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. In Indiana, more than one third of the House districts were considered politically competitive by Cook's measure in 1998. Now, none are.

That means incumbents are more likely to fear a challenger in the primary than in the general election.

Brooks has already drawn a GOP challenger: Carmel insurance broker David Stockdale whose criticisms of Congress include that lawmakers are focused on short-term Band-Aids instead of working on long-term solutions to problems.

Fettig, the tea party leader, said other challengers may emerge because of Brooks' support for the debt deal.

"When it counted, Rep. Brooks was nowhere to be found in the fight to defund Obamacare," Nathan Mehrens, president of Americans for Limited Government, said of Brooks and others who voted for the deal. "Just three weeks after taking a symbolic vote in favor of defunding, when it finally mattered, Brooks turned around and voted to allow funding for the implementation of Obamacare to take effect."

Brooks, who is in her first term, narrowly won the 2012 primary against four other Republicans in the district, which runs from northern Marion County through Grant County.

Souder said Brooks benefited from divisions among conservatives in the district that will likely remain.

"Social conservatives and libertarian conservatives, not to mention the more rural counties at the edges (of the district), make a combustible mix," he said. But because the district has some of the most prosperous, fastest-growing parts of the state, as well as large businesses interests -- such as Sallie Mae and health industry companies -- Souder said that gives an advantage to "conservative establishment candidates and stability."

"It's hard for me to conceive of her losing that district," Souder said of Brooks.

In Young's south-central Indiana district that runs from Johnson County to the Kentucky border, his only opponent so far is a Democrat: Bill Bailey, a former state representative and former mayor of Seymour.

Young's district was made more Republican after the decennial redistricting and GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney won 57 percent of the vote.

Romney got 58 percent in Bucshon's district, a fact that the conservative Club for Growth has used to argue that Bucshon should be voting more conservatively than he is if he wants to avoid a primary challenge. The group, which played a big role in Lugar's defeat, warned lawmakers before Wednesday's vote that supporting the deal would lower their annual rating of how often lawmakers sided with them.

Asked Thursday whether Young's and Brooks' support for the deal is enough for the group to seek a primary challenger, spokesman Barney Keller said the club doesn't base that decision off one vote.

"We make (political action committee) endorsements based on whether or not we think a lawmaker or candidate will advance a pro-growth agenda in Congress," Keller said.

Gonzales of the Rothenberg Political Report said for Wednesday's vote to come back to haunt a Republican who backed it, conservative groups will have to invest significant money into the race.

"Just the sheer act of voting yes is not enough to write their political obituary," Gonzales said.